


Arabella

by Boabdil



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Before Hogwarts, Squib perspective, Young Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-11 23:36:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17456438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boabdil/pseuds/Boabdil
Summary: As Arabella Figg watches over her young neighbor Harry, she considers her complicated relationship to the magical world.





	Arabella

The small black-haired boy was lying on his stomach at the edge of the lawn. Through the window, Arabella could see his toes peeking out of threadbare socks, and his fingers teasing strands of grass, and one sliver of his face. He looked thin, drawn, like he might have been going hungry, but in this moment he was peaceful. Something seemed to catch his eye suddenly. Arabella could see it too: the edge of something pink sticking out of the ground. He began to dig it out. When he finally unearthed it, she could see that it was a little plastic toy, like something you would find in the bottom of a cereal box, but filthy and squished. The boy was clearly delighted by it. He turned it over and over in his hands, as if it was the most fabulous treasure. 

Arabella saw the trouble coming before he did: the bigger boy, a peevish expression on his sweaty, sunburnt face, rolling around the side of the house on his new ten-speed. He screeched to a halt just an inch away from Harry’s fingers. “What’s that?” he demanded. “Give it to me.” 

“It’s nothing,” said Harry, clutching the toy in his hand. “Nothing, honestly. Just a stupid piece of junk.” 

“Then why do you want it? Give it to me.” Dudley seized Harry’s hand and forced the fingers open. There was nothing there. His hand was empty. Dudley stared. Then, seeming to decide Harry had been trying to trick him all along, he kicked the boy in the shin. “Stupid git,” he said. “As if you’d have anything worth taking anyways.” 

Harry was left alone, staring at his empty palm. Slowly, something pink began to gleam again between his fingers, growing more and more solid until the toy was whole and visible once more. The boy pocketed the toy, and walked inside. But before the door closed, Arabella caught a glimpse of his small, secretive smile. 

What did it feel like, Arabella wondered, to want something so much that the universe bent a little around your desire? She had certainly wanted things before, wanted them so desperately that she thought she would die, but nothing came of it. No mountains shook. No rivers changed their course. The world remained unmoved.

She remembered her sister’s screaming fits, when suddenly all the objects in the room would rise up and float for an instant, before falling back to earth with a deafening thunk. She remembered running, with her brother, from a puffing and enraged Cousin Marty, whose cereal milk they had exchanged for Elmer’s glue, and how the ivy on the wall had reached around to shelter her brother, and how she had cowered against the wall, exposed, and Marty had boxed her ears while her brother crouched silently behind the leaves. 

No, Arabella didn’t think the problem was not wanting things enough. It was something else--some inexplicable deficit. Not speaking the right language, not being born with the right set of limbs. There was something invisibly wrong with her that was right with her sister, and her brother, and her parents, and the small dark-haired boy across the street. At least it was a deficiency she shared with every other neighbor on Privet Drive--although that was about all she had in common with the neighbors, however. With the way they looked at her, the way they avoided her eyes, you would think that they, too, could sense some mysterious, invisible wrongness about her, like cats scenting a dog. 

It would have been a lonely life if it weren’t for Mr. Tibbs, and Dame Whiskers, and Topsy and Turvy and all the kittens. They kept her sane--if not in the traditional sense. They certainly never seemed to think there was anything indefinably wrong about her, besides not being a cat. 

Brrrring. That was the sound of the parlour door opening; Mr. Tibbs had come home for supper. Arabella turned see the Kneazles’ dignified whiskers emerging from the tiny door in the baseboard. He looked rather ill-tempered; maybe he had been visiting the Abbotts’, where that awful child kept trying to catch rides on his tail. Arabella could see a tiny glimpse of green wallpaper and sofa legs through the tiny door. 

The presence of these tiny doors--which linked one cat-loving household to another--was something Arabella could take no credit for. They seemed to appear mysteriously in any home in which a Kneazle spends a significant amount of time, as a convenient way for it to travel between its favorite haunts. Arabella’s house had four, and she was extremely proud of them. They meant that her household was particularly well-loved by catkind. For, although the Kneazles made the doors, all kinds of felines used them. They were Arabella’s best source of kittens: on many a rainy night, Arabella had been jolted awake by the tinny ringing of a miniature doorbell and snapped on the light to find a tiny bundle of wet kitten curled on her bedroom carpet. 

Arabella cracked open a can of tuna fish and spooned out a lump into the dainty china saucer that Mr. Tibbs required. If I were a witch, she thought, I’d turn myself into a cat. Her sister had been an animagus. A mourning dove. She used to talk about flying--much better than riding a broomstick, she said. After she died Arabella used to look at every dove and wonder if it was her, even though she knew it couldn’t be. It just seemed easier to believe, somehow, that Mariana had turned into a dove and stuck that way than that she had turned into nothing at all. 

It was strange after Mariana died, not just because her sister was gone, but because suddenly all these people wanted to talk to her--wizards and witches. Suddenly, in the very worst time of her life, people who had never shown an interest in Arabella wanted to meet her, invite her over to their homes for lunch, tell her all about Mariana and the cause she had died for. She was one of the first to die for that cause. They had no idea, none of them, how many more deaths were to come. Many of the same wizards and witches who served Arabella tea and crumpets and told her all about how noble her sister had been were dead too within the year. 

And Arabella didn’t disagree. It was a worthy cause. And, as the witches and wizards often pointed out, if Voldemort hated Muggleborns so much, he certainly mustn’t like (lowering their voices delicately) Squibs, should he? 

Arabella agreed. It wasn’t that she didn’t think it was relevant to her, or that she didn’t believe she might be in danger. It was more that she had always been stranded on the edge of the magical world--like a shivering child looking into a warm, well-lighted room, pressing their nose against the windowpane--and suddenly here were all these people, insisting not only that she become a part of that world, but that she had always been a part. That she had a grave responsibility to the warm, well-lit people moving in the room apart from her. And then she felt sick with guilt for not throwing herself into the cause that Mariana had died for. Until she would spot a dove nestled in the crook of a branch and think, there she is. 

A knock on the door interrupted Arabella’s reminiscences. Through the peephole, Arabella glimpsed Petunia Dursley’s blonde highlights and grim pink-lipsticked scowl--which inverted into an insincere simper as soon as she opened the door. 

“Good morning, Arabella,” said Petunia. “Your chrysanthemums look lovely.”

 

There was a long silence. 

“Vernon and I are looking forward to our cruise,” she continued. “Do you ever travel?”

“No, Mr. Tibbs and the rest of the family keep me tied to home,” said Arabella. 

“Ah...yes,” said Petunia, darting a look of barely-concealed disgust at Mr. Tibbs through the open door. “Well, it is a great inconvenience, but since Vernon and I are going to be gone for two weeks, and little Dudderkins has his retreat for extremely gifted children, someone is going to have to watch the boy--my late sister’s son,” she clarified. “And as you are so tied down with those...animals, we thought perhaps you could keep an eye on him. Prevent him from turning to petty crime or illicit substances, for the good of the neighborhood.” 

“Do you really think a boy of six years old is likely to turn to illicit substances?”

“Well, the way that young people are these days, there’s really no telling,” Petunia said. “We’ll bring the boy around next weekend around noon. And do be careful--he can be very clever, always trying to steal little bits of this or that from the cupboard. Lock up your things. Oh, and I don’t know if you got the notice from the Homeowners Association, but the community has decided on a more unified color scheme for the neighborhood--so when you repaint, remember, beige, not taupe!”

“I certainly will,” said Arabella, internally resolving to buy ten cans of the most offensively brilliant shade of turquoise she could find.

“So glad we had this chat,” replied Petunia. She turned and clacked away down the drive.

Arabella shut the door. Mr. Tibbs was looking up at her expectantly. He knew a message to Dumbledore was in order. The boy was coming to stay with her. She hurried over to the writing desk, scrawled out a letter, and rolled it into a tight scroll. She turned to Mr. Tibbs. “Bring that to Albus,” she said, “and there’ll be catnip in it for you.” The cat took the scroll in his mouth. The tiny door in the baseboard swung open for him, revealing a long, dark tunnel, just big enough for a cat. She watched until he vanished into the darkness. The door swung closed. 

\-----------------

By the time the boy arrived, the cake was already stale. Arabella had baked it, in a fit of enthusiasm, a week before the date Harry was set to stay with her. Since then, it had hardened into a rock-like slab. She considered throwing it out, but it was too late to bake another. The boy would be here any minute. At least the cabbage stew was fresh. 

The doorbell rang, and there he was, Petunia Dursley clutching his shoulder with her claw-like fingers. “Now, behave yourself with Mrs Figg,” she said. “And don’t try to steal anything, because I warned her about you, and she’ll be sure to make you empty your pockets before you go.” She gave Arabella a simpering smile. “I’m certain he’ll be very good, because we gave him a good talking-to about what will happen if he isn’t.” 

A car horn honked. “Petunia!” howled Vernon Dursley from the drive. “For heaven’s sake, what’s taking the boy so long?” Petunia thrust Harry through the door. “We’ll be back in two weeks.” She hurried down the drive and into the waiting car. 

Harry looked up at Arabella. “I won’t steal anything, I promise,” he said. “I don’t do that, except when I’m really hungry.” 

“I’m sure you won’t,” said Arabella. “And I hope you won’t be too hungry, either. I’ve made some lovely cabbage stew. Come inside.” 

“Where does that tiny door go?” said Harry. He was squatting beside Mr. Tibb’s favorite entrance, playing with its tiny bell. 

“It’s for my cats,” Arabella said. She was not supposed to reveal anything about magic to the boy, but fortunately Harry accepted this explanation without question. Arabella went to the kitchen and filled two bowls with soup. She tried, unsuccessfully, to lever the knife out of the cake. It would have to wait. 

When she came back into the living room, she saw that Harry had something in his hand. It was the little pink thing that she had seen him dig out of the mud. When he heard her come in, he started guiltily and tried to hide the toy in his palm. 

“It’s alright,” she said. “I’m not going to take it.” She set down the bowls of cabbage stew on the table. Slowly, Harry opened his palm. In the center was a tiny pink plastic elephant, dirty and battered, but evidently loved. 

“What’s its name?” Arabella asked. 

“You’ll laugh,” said Harry. 

“No I won’t.” 

“He’s called Trunky. And he can make music with its trunk, and blow big blasts of air that knock people down.” 

“Sounds useful,” said Arabella.

“Yeah, and he can stomp with his feet so that whole buildings topple over.” Harry mimicked the sound of Trunky blowing a big gust through his trunk. 

“Very impressive,” Arabella laughed. There was a jingle from the baseboard. The door opened. It was a cat Arabella didn’t know, a tabby with odd markings around its eyes. It dropped a rolled-up letter at her feet, then turned and walked back through the tunnel.

“Never seen a cat do that,” Harry remarked, and returned to playing with Trunky. 

Arabella unrolled the letter. It was in Dumbledore’s slanted cursive hand. Dear Arabella, it began, 

Delighted as I am that Harry will be visiting you, I must impress upon you the importance of the fact that our mission not be compromised by the unfortunate attitude of his rather unpleasant relations. I fear that if Harry becomes too close to you, or if indeed he even seems to be enjoying his time with you whatsoever, they will disallow any contact between you and the boy and a valuable link will be severed. It is imperative to Harry’s protection that you remember this, as much as it pains us both. It is for Harry’s protection that you must watch over him, ensure his safety, observe his growing-up, but not grow too close to him, lest we compromise our larger mission. 

Regretfully yours,  
Albus

Arabella folded the letter up and looked at the boy sitting across the table, stomping the plastic elephant’s feet into the tablecloth. 

“Eat up, Harry. Your soup is getting cold.”


End file.
